1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printing device, and particularly to a printing device having a stencil printing device for performing stencil printing using a UV curable ink.
2. Description of the Related Art
A stencil printing device is widely used for printing various distributed papers and documents in educational markets, public offices, partnership organizations, hospitals and the like, and for obtaining a number of printed matters or a number of copies of printed matters such as newspaper inserts, classifieds, messages inside private companies, and various other documents, because it is capable of printing at high speeds at low running cost. In order for anyone to be able to operate such a printing device easily at anytime, the printing ink employed in this printing device is the one which normally is not solidified in the atmosphere, and the printing device is designed such that troubles such as cleaning of the print drum portion every time the printing device is used can be eliminated.
Since the stencil ink is designed such that it penetrates a piece of printing paper, which is an example of a sheet-like recording medium, and is dried in appearance, the surface of the printed matter easily becomes messy if rubbed by hand, due to the undried ink. This fact has been pointed out as a significant problem of the stencil printing device from the past, but no effective countermeasures have been implemented.
As a conventional printing device for improving the drying performance of printed matters, for example, Examined Utility Model Application Publication No. H4-35188, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. H5-64878, and the like propose a stencil printing device designed for UV curable ink, which comprises an ultraviolet (also referred to as “UV” hereinafter) irradiation apparatus and performs stencil printing using a UV curable ink (also referred to as “UV ink” hereinafter).
The stencil printing device disclosed in Examined Utility Model Application Publication No. H4-35188 is a stencil printing device designed for UV ink, in which only a UV ink can be used, thus, if printing needed to be performed with non-UV ink, another stencil printing device, which is designed for non-UV ink, was required. On the other hand, the printing device disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. H5-64878 can perform printing with normal inks, but the paper conveying means has to be removed, and operations/performances on the device were extremely troublesome.